Читать книгу The Corpse Next Door: A Detective Sergeant Randall Mystery - John Farris - Страница 5

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THAT night I was having a drink in the bar of Roxy Marko’s place on Highway 44 when Miller Starkey came over.

“Evening, Sergeant,” he said amiably, sliding onto a stool next to mine.

I wasn’t particularly interested in talking to him, or to anyone else, but I returned his greeting.

“Whiskey sour, Max,” he advised the bartender. “Buy you a drink, Sergeant?”

“This’ll hold me for a while, Mr. Starkey. How are the girls?”

“Fine. Fine.” He beamed at me. He was proud of his two girls. “Pootsie—that’s Alice, you know—is expecting again. And Juanita is president of her sorority up at State.”

I nodded. The Starkey girls were famous in Cheyney. Born a year apart, they had raised hell from the cradle on, growing boisterous and beautiful. The last time I had seen them together they were under arrest on a shoplifting charge. Gulliver and Starkey had held a fast conference and the girls weren’t booked. Charges were subsequently dropped.

In return for this favor, Starkey allowed police personnel to buy everything in his men’s shop, the best in town, for twenty-five percent off. It meant, to me and to most of the others, the difference between feeling almost dressed and well dressed on the same salary.

Miller Starkey was unimpressively built, very near-sighted, with gray hair that stuck straight up from his scalp about four inches. It was hard to imagine how he could have been responsible for the Starkey women.

Max delivered the whiskey sour and Starkey fondled the glass before drinking, smiling. He smiles all the time. I suppose it’s a mannerism. Like nose-picking.

“So Jimmy Herne committed suicide,” he said. “I guess that wraps up the case, doesn’t it, Sergeant?”

“As far as we’re concerned it was already wrapped up.”

He lost some of his man-to-man chumminess. “Certainly. I only meant—” He poked in embarrassment at his glass.

The small bar was cool and uncrowded. To my left were glass panels partially covered with soft blue drapes and on the other side of the glass was the dining room, almost filled to capacity despite the fact that it was past nine o’clock.

“You know, I . . . I wanted to talk to you about Mr. Smithell,” Starkey said.

“How’s that, Mr. Starkey?”

The smile again. “It’s this way. Mr. Smithell owed rather a large bill at the time of—his death—and I don’t quite know . . .”

“Oh. I wouldn’t worry about that, Mr. Starkey. See Nordin Kaylor and I’m sure he’ll take care of it.” Nordin Kaylor had been Smithell’s partner in two Cheyney automobile agencies.

“Certainly. I should have thought of that.” The unreal whiteness of his false teeth touched the rim of the glass. “I knew Mr. Smithell had only lived in Cheyney about three years and had no relatives here, so you understand . . .”

I looked toward the dining room just as Roxy Marko was passing. He noticed me and waved, so I lifted my glass in his direction.

“It seems as if there’s no gratitude in the world,” Starkey said. “Here Mr. Smithell was willing to take on a boy who had been in the reformatory, let him live in his house, pay him a good salary. Probably the boy was planning all along to rob him when the opportunity arose. Did you ever learn the full story, Sergeant? The papers were so vague . . .”

He looked at me avidly over his glass, perhaps anticipating a party that week, a group of his friends discussing the same subject, himself saying casually, “Now, Sergeant Randall told me . . .”

“His confession was very complete,” I said. I didn’t say that Gulliver had written it and Jimmy had contributed only his signature.

You returned to the house about eleven, after the picture show. And he was asleep. You figured it was as good a time as any. But you didn’t figure he’d wake up. You had to hit him. You didn’t mean to hit him so hard. Then you took the watch and money along with the jewelry. Three thousand bucks worth. You didn’t know he was dead when you packed your stuff and beat it, did you? Later when you found out how hot you were you got rid of the jewelry and watch, dumped them in the river somewhere. That’s how it was, huh, Jimmy? Just sign here, boy, and we’ll leave you alone.

“The very day . . .” Starkey said.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m afraid my mind was wondering.” His smile looked like it had been stepped on. “I just said that the very day Jimmy killed him, Mr. Smithell was planning to buy Jimmy a new suit.”

I felt vaguely apprehensive. “Did you read that in the paper, Mr. Starkey?”

“Why—no. Mr. Smithell called me that afternoon, before he was murdered, told me Jimmy was coming in next day for a fitting. He wanted me to sort of influence the boy’s choice so Jimmy wouldn’t come home with anything drastic in color or style.”

I took a longer swallow of my drink than usual and never tasted it. “I see. Was he going to charge it?”

“No. He told me that he’d given the money to Jimmy. Thirty dollars. He didn’t want the boy picking out something too expensive, so he thought it might make Jimmy feel more responsible if he paid for it himself.”

Starkey looked past me with an expression of mock surprise. “Well, here comes my wife. I thought maybe she’d fallen in.” He chuckled. “Thanks for the advice, Sergeant. Drop by the store some time this week. We’ve received a shipment of those pastel shirts you like so much.”

“Thanks, Mr. Starkey.” I sat there after he had left, feeling a slow gathering sickness in my stomach, a sickness that couldn’t be vomited up. I gulped the rest of the drink and looked at myself in the mirror behind the bar. I was ugly this night.

Someone tapped my shoulder. “Excuse me.”

I turned and looked at a waiter.

“Mr. Marko sent me, Sergeant Randall. He’d like for you to have a drink with him in his office.”

I wanted to say no, say that I had to go somewhere, away from the pressure I was feeling, like lazy tightening coils. But there was no way I could refuse.

I left the bar and crossed the foyer, went up a flight of stairs to Roxy’s office. I knocked and was invited in.

As soon as I opened the door I saw Gulliver inside.

He was sitting in one of Roxy’s big white leather chairs with his shoes off and a drink in his hand. He smiled peacefully at me.

“Hello, Chief. Roxy,” I said, nodding. Roxy was fixing himself a drink at his desk. He looked at me inquisitively.

“Bill?”

“Bourbon over ice, a little sparkling.”

“A man of simple tastes,” Gulliver said. I could tell he was in a mellow mood. He lifted his glass at me and winked. “Ten years old. Roxy’s putting on the dog tonight.”

Roxy smiled slightly. He’s a small man, about five feet five, with a gentle expression that never seems to change. He has gleaming copper-colored hair and a small mustache, and there are clusters of freckles around his eyes, growing darker with age.

He handed me my drink and waved me to a chair. Roxy enjoys luxury. The office walls are padded halfway to the ceiling with the same white leather as the chairs carry, and on one corner stretches a curved sofa that is part of the wall.

On one wall hangs a large oil painting of a nude man and woman. It’s Gulliver’s favorite picture. I’ve seen him sit in that chair and look at the picture for half an hour, pouring drinks into his belly, and at the end of that time a little smile will start and he’ll laugh his head off and then he won’t look at the picture for a while. I’ve never seen Roxy look at it.

“How did the Francis girl take it this afternoon?” Gulliver said.

I looked at him. His eyes were guileless.

“Pretty hard,” I said. “They were close, as people are in that part of town. She was hoping, all the time, that something could be done. She didn’t really believe it, but she was hoping.”

“She’s a fighter,” Gulliver said sympathetically. “Lot of backbone. Not like Jimmy.” He shook his head and sighed. “I always hate to see a good fighter beaten.”

Roxy drank silently behind his desk, watching us almost shyly. He takes his whiskey in a shot glass along with a larger glass of ice and soda, drinking some of the soda, then throwing a little whiskey on top of it.

Gulliver stretched happily, one hand on his belly, the belly with the deceptive slab of fat and the corded muscles underneath. He looked at the picture and his lips were full and heavy at the corners, his eyes a little restive. He drank slowly. Gulliver has a liquor stomach, lined with sponges. He can throw down better than a pint of whiskey and he won’t look drunk, if you don’t know what to look for. Then he’ll put the bottle down and fold his hands over his stomach and sleep for twenty-four hours, unless somebody sets him on fire. But he wasn’t drinking that fast tonight and I knew, the different sort of way he was looking at the picture, that tonight maybe it would be Alise, the big red-headed one who liked to go down fighting. Roxy was a good friend. He was big, maybe the biggest, in local politics. He owned six gin mills besides this place, the big tourist court and restaurant, and other odds and ends, like Alise. In an hour, maybe, Gulliver would feel the whiskey he was drinking so slowly now, feel it just right, and he would look at Roxy and Roxy would pick up the phone. Not that it was that kind of tourist court. It was just that Roxy was such a good friend.

And I had a feeling, looking at Gulliver, that I wanted to destroy the mood he was constructing, that I was going to anyway, because the good whiskey hadn’t rinsed the dead metal taste of fear from my mouth.

“You know, Bill,” Gulliver said, “I shouldn’t have said what I did this afternoon. About the Francis girl. I don’t blame you for maybe getting a little peeved. Forget what I said about Foundry Road. I’ll have one of the patrol cars drive by. Not much use in it, anyway. Kids are going to get their snatch, one way or another.”

He gave me that smile, so I would feel all warm and good and gee-Chief-you-mean-I’m-part-of-the-team-again?

“Thanks,” I said.

Gulliver got up and walked over to Roxy’s desk, helped himself to the whiskey. “Say, Bill, when was it that soldier came in?”

“The one who beefed about dropping three hundred bucks in that poker game at the Regal? Monday night, I think.”

“Yeah.” Gulliver looked at Roxy. “We’ve had some kickbacks lately, Roxy. Nothing serious. A couple of soldiers who dropped their rolls and wanted to start something. But if somebody from Fort McHale gets took in one of your games and goes to his C.O. I’m liable to hear from the Provost.”

“Some people are just unlucky at poker, Sam,” Roxy said. “You know that. If everybody won I’d be out of business.”

I couldn’t see his eyes where I was sitting, but I knew they were as bright and cold as morning sunlight on pond ice, despite his soft, almost whispering voice. A lot of people who thought they knew Roxy had never looked directly into those eyes. You could interpret Roxy a lot of different ways. I had my own ideas about him. So did Gulliver. He handled Roxy carefully. He had heard the story, too.

“Sure, I know,” Gulliver said. “It was just the usual sour grapes routine. But trouble could start. Maybe you ought to get in touch with your steerer down at the Fort. Bring him up here for a little talk. Make sure he’s more careful who he sends this way. Then if somebody drops a wad he won’t kick because he has sense enough to know it wasn’t his night.”

Roxy nodded. “I guess I’d better. Thanks for telling me, Sam.”

I had no taste for that kind of talk. It was part of the discontent I had felt for a long time, the arrangements Gulliver had, with Miller Starkey, with Roxy. I suppose there was nothing wrong with us taking advantage of Starkey’s discount. It was no secret in town. And there was nothing wrong with Roxy’s poker games in the hotel, although not so many people knew about that. Or the women outside the bus station and servicemen’s center, who dressed well and were discreet about it and you would never guess what they were. They paid by the month, to Gulliver, and had helped finance a new squad car. There was nothing really wrong, you could argue, because no money went into private pockets. But I felt the discontent, because the Starkey girls liked to drive fast, and some day there might be a wreck, and Starkey would remind Gulliver of the discount. And I remembered the look in Roxy’s eyes, as if he were seeing something a long way off, a bigger and better Roxy, and I remembered the story. I wondered if anybody could really handle Roxy, as Gulliver said he could.

“I had a talk with Miller Starkey downstairs,” I said.

Gulliver dropped clear cylinders of fresh ice into his new drink. “How’s the old man getting along?”

“All right, I guess. He wanted to talk about Jimmy Herne.”

“He would,” Gulliver said, tasting his drink, then adding a touch of sparkling.

“He said that Smithell called him the afternoon before he was murdered. Smithell told Starkey he was sending Jimmy Herne in next day to buy a suit. Jimmy had the money. He was going to learn responsibility by paying for it himself.”

Gulliver was about to say something, but didn’t. The mood had been as light and slender as fine blonde hair and I had snapped it. He was concentrating on recalling it but I knew he wouldn’t.

“He had thirty bucks to buy the suit with,” I said.

Gulliver went back to his chair. Roxy watched both of us as if he were peeking through a keyhole.

“Ah, let’s forget about Smithell and the kid, for God’s sake,” Gulliver said. “I put in a hard week’s work on that one. It’s finished. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Jimmy had exactly thirty bucks in his pocket when he was picked up,” I said stubbornly, trying to make him see it.

It’s a funny thing about Gulliver. When he’s starting to burn, he tries to flex that stiff left wrist. The harder he tries, the madder he gets, because it only moves a quarter-inch in any direction. He was trying to flex it now, looking at it with shiny intent eyes.

“Now, listen, Bill. I don’t know why you keep talking after I told you to shut—to keep still. Roxy’s our host and I don”t want to bother him with police business. I’m telling you to forget it.”

Maybe I wouldn’t have kept on then, but he picked exactly the wrong tone to use, bawling me out like I was a kid. “Jimmy said he got the thirty bucks to buy a suit. It looks like he was telling the truth. Maybe he was telling the truth about the other things. Maybe he didn’t kill Smithell.” I threw in the last without even thinking, because I was getting sore.

Gulliver gave me a furious look. He stood up, leaving his drink on the floor. “All right, if you’re not going to shut up I’ll get out of here. I don’t know what gets into you, Bill. I just want a quiet little evening and you go and spoil the whole goddam thing. I don’t know what’s the matter with you, Bill.”

Roxy said, “Sam, do you want me to call—”

“No!” Gulliver raged. “I’m too upset for any pigeon plucking tonight. I’m just going to get the hell out of here.”

He started for the door and was halfway across the rug when he remembered he had left his shoes in front of the chair. He hesitated, then turned around and went back for them. He carried the shoes in one hand and made for the door and I felt a laugh coming. I suppressed it because there is nothing funny about Gulliver when he’s angry.

The door closed behind him and there was a loaded silence that slowly became weary.

I drank from my glass, feeling sort of ridiculous and a little bit sorry. “Well, I’ve got to open my goddam mouth,” I said. “I’m sorry, Roxy.”

“You ought to be,” Roxy said, but his voice, as usual, was mild. “I suppose it’s none of my business, but you ought to forget about it, Bill. Or take it up with him later. You picked a bad time.”

“I know.”

Roxy went through his ritual of putting a little whiskey down. “We were talking about you, Bill, before you came up. Gulliver likes you, Bill. He really likes you. And respects you, too. He knows you’ve got the guts to stand up to him. But you shouldn’t overdo it. I don’t know much about the case you and Sam have been working on. I know he was satisfied that the case was closed. You seem intent on reopening it.”

“Look, Roxy,” I said, “I’m a cop. I’m supposed to keep an open mind about the cases I investigate. Jimmy Herne confessed he killed Smithell. I don’t think he would have said one word about killing the old man if he hadn’t done it, because he had everything to lose. Gulliver worked on him, though. Nothing unusual. But he worked on him. I don’t know how much the kid could take. I don’t know if he could have been made under duress to confess a murder he didn’t commit. I thought the kid was guilty. I still think so. I learned tonight that one of the statements Jimmy made, about where he got the money, stands up. That’s all. I was just telling Gulliver. Maybe I said more than necessary. He shouldn’t have told me to keep my mouth shut in front of you.”

“Let’s forget it, Bill. Sam will cool off. I was saying, Bill, that he likes you. We were talking about Endicott earlier.”

Endicott had been assistant chief of police until his death two month ago. “Yeah?”

“Gulliver thinks you could fill that job and retain your present duties—for forty dollars a month more.”

“It would be nice,” I said, surprised.

Roxy smiled. “You’ve got a good future in Cheyney, Bill. I thought you’d like to know. That’s why I’m cautioning you not to assert yourself so much with Gulliver. Not that you should let yourself be pushed around. You know.”

“I think so.”

“If you’re staying for dinner,” Roxy said, “I’ll call down to Rudy and have him put your steak on.”

While he was on the phone, I went to his desk and mixed myself another drink, not thinking about Gulliver now, but about Roxy, who thought I had a good future in Cheyney. Roxy with the eyes of cold purpose. I was lucky to be so popular with everybody.

LATER, WHEN I WAS LEAVING, I WALKED OVER TO THE SHED-like bungalow that housed some of Roxy’s kitchen help and a couple of chambermaids who cleaned up in the motel. One of them had been involved in some petty thefts on the grounds a couple of months before, but I had let her off after she had restored the pilfered property to the transient guest, who didn’t want to be delayed by pressing charges.

I got her to step outside with me. She was a gray, wispy woman on the other side of fifty. “Been behaving yourself, Barbara?”

“Oh, sure, Sergeant. Sure I have. I’ll never do anything like that again.”

“Look, Barbara. You have a set of master keys, don’t you? I mean, you have to get into all the cabins and rooms and places.”

“Sure. I have a set and so does the other girl.”

“Does she clean Roxy’s office, or do you?”

“I do. Buts—”

“I just want the key for an hour or so. I’ll get it right back to you. Nobody will know.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, Sergeant!”

“You want me to mention about that stealing? You want me to tell Roxy, or maybe Chief Gulliver?”

She said nothing more. I drove the key over to a hardware retailer in Rocky Spring, a friend of mine. Rocky Spring lies about twenty miles south on the highway, and by the time I got there my friend had gone to bed. I woke him, got him to go to his store. There he duplicated the key for me, and I drove back to Cheyney, returning the original to old Barbara.

THERE IS AN OLD BLACKTOP ROAD SOUTH OF ROXY’S PLACE that is a quick way into town. It winds for four miles through farmland and is called Foundry Road because of an old ironworks built along it somewhere. The kids like the road because it’s always dark and rarely used and there are many dirt side roads.

Heat lightning glimmered in the thick clouds over the river valley to the north and there was a musty wet smell of rain in the air as I drove along the road, away from Roxy’s. As I took a curve my headlights revealed a truck pulled almost off the road. A man stood beside the truck. I slowed as I saw the car in the ditch on the other side.

I pulled across the road and parked facing the truck. It was carrying a load of furniture with a tarpaulin stretched tight and lashed to the body. The Negro driver leaned against the front fender and watched me come with a tight sick expression.

I showed him the badge and he looked at it without eagerness. A few drops of rain were falling. The shoulders of the road were already soft from a rain the night before.

“What happened?”

He waved his hand at the ditch on the opposite side. “That car came roarin’ at me ninety miles a second. Straight at me, officer. I pulled clean off the road and he pulled out, too. I never heard such a noise. He musta laid down fifty feet of rubber. He went into that soft shoulder and couldn’t bring it back. Went nose down into that ditch. Not more’n half a minute ago.”

“Anybody hurt?”

His throat moved darkly as he swallowed. “I don’t know. I’m afraid to go and look. He went over with an awful whump. I thought I saw one of ’em throwed out.”

I swore to myself. “All right. You got a flashlight in that rig?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get it and stand back of my car. If anybody comes along slow him down. I’ll go down and count the pieces.”

He walked toward the cab of the truck, his feet heavy. “Oh, God,” he moaned. There was more rain, falling straight down, silently.

I went to my car, a ’53 Oldsmobile, the down payment on which I had paid out of what I had saved buying clothes at Starkey’s, got a slicker from the back seat and a flashlight from the dash compartment. I crossed the highway and started down the steep slope of the ditch.

There was a woman in slacks lying face up on the bank about halfway into the ditch. Her face was bloodless. I kneeled beside her and let the light play over her. She was out cold, but nothing seemed to be broken. Her breathing was all right.

I turned my light on the car, a new black Chrysler, wedged in at the bottom of the ditch between the two steep sides. The light fell on a man leaning against the side of the Chrysler, holding his stomach with one hand. There was a dark cut on his forehead.

I walked up to him, holding the light in his face. He was good-looking, with lean jaws and heavy eyebrows and a wide mouth. His gray eyes were dulled from fright or pain. I recognized him right away.

“Hurt?” I asked him.

“Steering wheel caught me in the gut,” he said carefully, as if he wasn’t quite sure he would be able to talk without pain. “Not too hard. Knocked the wind out of me. I think I cut my head.”

“You did. It doesn’t look bad.” I stepped closer to him. He was breathing with his mouth open, and I could smell the whiskey he had been tucking away. He didn’t look drunk, though.

“That’s some breath you got there,” I said. “It should go point one five on the drunkometer, easy.”

“Who are you?” he said suspiciously.

“Sergeant Randall, Cheyney police.”

“Jesus,” he said sardonically, “am I lucky tonight.” He still held his stomach. “Why don’t you go away and let somebody else rescue me?”

“How fast were you traveling, hot rod?”

“Too fast. I know. Listen, I’m not drunk. I’ve had a couple, but I’m not drunk. I could handle the car. I could handle it all right. It was the soft shoulder that did the damage.”

“Yeah.”

His voice strengthened as he became angry. “Hell, nobody was hurt, so why make a fuss?”

“You ought to see the look on the face of that colored boy you almost ran down. Ask him why the fuss. Ask the lady. She’s not taking a nap up there.”

He seemed almost disgusted. “She got panicky when we started to slide. Jerked the door open and bailed out. She probably passed out when she hit, that’s all.”

His forehead was wrinkled. He passed a hand over his eyes and straightened up uncertainly. He took his hand away from his belly and nothing fell out so he turned around and leaned into the car and took something off the front seat. It was a half-full fifth of whiskey.

As he brought it up I reached out and took it away from him, put it in my raincoat pocket. He seemed about thirty years old or so but he looked like a kid when he got indignant.

“The driver’s license,” I said.

He leaned against the side of the car again. “I guess it’s time for you to learn something,” he told me, with a smug look in his eyes that said I was sure going to fall over when I heard it.

“I know,” I said. “You’re Nathan Hale Fisher, you’re a selectman of Cheyney Township, and you’re liable to be Works Commissioner come next election. And also your family is a big deal in these parts.”

His face sagged a little as I spoiled his surprise. He rubbed a hand over his slack jaw. “Wait a minute. I’m a little fuzzy here. What was that name again?”

“Randall.”

“You the detective was in charge of that Smithell mess?”

“The same.”

He nodded gloomily. “Sure. Listen. I know it by heart. ‘Well, I noticed lights on over at the Smithell house. It was about midnight, I guess. I thought he hadn’t gone to bed. I was worried about the ring my wife had given me, so I . . .’ Will you please give me my bottle back for a second before you impound it?”

“Sure.” I took the bottle out of my raincoat pocket, pulled the cork and let the whiskey spill out on the ground. He reached for it but I held the bottle out of the way until it was empty. Then I gave it to him. He took it with a sort of sneer and threw it away.

He put a hand on the fender of his car. “Now how the hell am I going to get this out of here?” he said. Falling rain had plastered his black hair against his forehead.

“Don’t you think we ought to see about the lady?”

He blinked. His eyes were full of some terrible pain. “Leave her alone,” he said, with weary unconcern. “She’s no better than the mud she’s lying in.”

I looked at him for a few seconds. He was grinding his back teeth together. He held one hand tight to his temples.

“Pickup?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I found her in one of Roxy’s joints.”

“You know Roxy Marko?”

He held up two fingers together. “Like this,” he said.

I turned away from him and walked up the bank toward the woman, slipping some in the mud. The rain had brought her to and she looked up at me, scared, her face and hair sodden, her slacks tight on her legs. She moaned, front teeth edging over her underlip.

“You all right, lady?”

“I’m dying,” she said. “I’m dying.”

“Why don’t you try to get up?” I said. She smelled worse than Fisher.

“No,” she said. “I’m dying.”

“Come on,” I said. “This is no place for it. Come on and get up.”

“I got a pain,” she said. She put her hand on her abdomen. “I got a pain here.”

“I hope it’s a boy,” I said politely.

At this, she moved around and lurched to her feet like a colt learning to walk. She had hair only a little darker than orange peel and a sagging chin and pouches under her eyes. She looked about thirty-five.

“Goddam sonbitch,” she muttered, shivering. “Gon’ sue goddam sonbitch drive so fast.” She slipped and fell against me, legs dragging. “I’m dying.”

I picked her up and carried her out of the ditch, placing my feet carefully on the slippery bank. I carried her across the road and tucked her away in my Oldsmobile. On the floor of the back seat. I didn’t want my seat covers ruined. She was due to puke her head off.

It was raining harder as I climbed back down the bank. Fisher was still beside his car. He stood there in the rain with water dripping from his hair, his forehead lined with pain, his teeth chattering. He looked bad.

He put his hands over his handsome face. “Ah, God,” he wailed. “I’ve got another damned headache.” He took his hands away and turned toward the car and took three steps alongside it, then slipped in the mud. He kneeled beside the back fender and looked at me as if I had interrupted his evening prayer.

“What are you looking at?” he cried, his eyes squinting and wild. “Like fingers squeezing my head . . . What are you looking at, you dirty son of a bitch?” He got to his feet and floundered around the car and jerked open the front door, half-fell into the front seat, reached out a hand to open the glove compartment. He groped inside. Rain hit against the roof and made a loose wet curtain covering the door space. His feet scrambled a little on the ground. He took out a small bottle, uncapped it, and white pills gleamed in his muddy palm. He swallowed them, put his face against the seat in a vise formed by his arms. He stayed that way for about a minute, then slipped out of the car, turned his head and vomited. It lasted a long time, or maybe it just seemed long, standing in the rain. Finally he crawled away from his regurgitation and lay down in a cradle of wet weeds. I went over to him and took him by the shoulder. His face was composed. The vomiting seemed to have done him some good. One of his eyes, the one I could see, opened a little.

“Take me home,” he said.

So I went out of the ditch again. The truckman stood in the road, his flashlight pointed at the blacktop.

“Wasn’t nobody hurt much, was they?” he said.

“No,” I said. “I need some help now. I have to haul out a man. I don’t think I can manage by myself.”

He came with me, walking behind me. “I should have gone down in the ditch, I know it,” he said apologetically. “Everybody’s afraid of something. I guess I’m just most afraid of seein’ hurt people.”

“You think I’m afraid of something?” I said.

“Why,” he said surprised, “why, I don’t know.”

The hell he didn’t. He could smell it on me, like a dog can. But he couldn’t know why, and I didn’t know, myself.